By Kristin Camitta Zimet
4 A.M., the street lamp’s yellow eye
fixes the cabin: cots, ravine between,
bench like a plank bridge,
the heater’s stiff blue tufts,
the floor scraped, hand-hacked,
rough as our family can go to ground,
deep as we soft ones scratch.
My head on the down pillow,
feather-cowled, a barred owl’s,
could swivel all the way round
to zero, the egg that hatched me,
if I let it; I could float over
my body, pellet of fur and vertebrae,
wrapped in its blankets like an amulet.
I want to glide above all tribes of me
the night looses: scuttlers, skulkers,
all secret nosers burrowing
to earthen black from air’s looser black,
all rabbity twitchers, brushtailed slinkers,
tent-skinned gliders,
clingers upon black oak.
But the laboring of human breath,
my husband’s and my sons’, snoring
like mallards squabbling in swampy sleep,
the gusting of pumped air,
pant of motor and scrabble of watch
are a fur of sound, rough to swallow,
over the hot silent heart.
It is muscle I want,
what moves us deep in red undress,
the blood chasing its tail
in desperate loops as talons constrict.
So I rise, stuff nightgown under coat,
hood and boot myself owl-round, and sail
out of the wooden box, the human nest.
The sky’s arched primaries are brushed white;
the earth snow-breasted, streaked,
running with shadows.
Now I hear her: cousin, sister, self,
the barred owl strikes up her jackal yap,
her crusty howl.
I swoop to answer.
Kristin Camitta Zimet is the author of Take in My Arms the Dark, a poetry collection, and co-author of A Tender Time, a book about end of life. Her poetry, published in twelve countries, has been performed from arboretum to concert hall. She leads Christmas Bird Counts and Nightjar Counts.